United States President Barack Obama has postponed his scheduled next week's trip to Australia and Indonesia as he wages a last-ditch political battle over his healthcare reforms, Xinhua reported.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has told Channel Seven on Friday morning that Obama rang him Friday morning to discuss the trip. "I 'm going to be very happy any time the president chooses to visit, " he said.
"We had a conversation on the phone this morning - he'd like to have a more relaxed visit than the 24-hour whip in, whip out that the last one had come down to."
"I'm pretty relaxed about all that. I know President Obama pretty well. It'll be nice to have he and Michelle and the kids," he said.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has told Radio National the Government is disappointed but understands why Obama is not coming. He says details will still have to be fleshed out over the proposed June trip.
And he denies that the postponement of Obama's trip, as well as the cancellation of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's trip earlier this year, will be damaging to the relationship.
"None of these events goes to the strength of the alliance relationship or to the strength of the engagement either between the President and the Prime Minister, or Defence Minister John Faulkner and the Secretary of Defense Gates, or indeed myself or Hillary Clinton," he said.
The White House has announced the presidential visit has been rescheduled to June and says Obama "deeply regrets" the delay.
But analysts say the postponement of the trip comes as no surprise, because his presidency is hanging in the balance, according to Australian Associated Press.
Obama had already delayed his trip to Indonesia and Australia by three days and had cut short the Australian leg to just 24 hours.
This was going to be Obama's first foreign trip of the year but it has fallen victim to an intense political battle over his signature domestic policy issue - a push to overhaul America's health care system. Enditem